


Everyone wants to feel safe in the dark

by Beleriandings



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, Memory Loss, bill cipher is... somewhere in all this but doesn't actually appear in the story, building the portal, mild body horror and eye horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-07
Updated: 2016-10-07
Packaged: 2018-08-19 23:45:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8228821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: He took a step forward, face set in determination, even as he wondered what he thought he was doing. And would it be dangerous to wake him, he thought for a moment. There was something, something wrong here, but he couldn’t quite remember it…





	

**Author's Note:**

> It’s heavily implied in Journal 3 that Fiddleford used the memory gun on Ford to make Ford think he had destroyed it, a scenario whose endless potential for feels was what gave rise to this fic.
> 
> \-----------------
> 
> EDIT: So, like a few days after I posted this there was the news that we'll be getting the blacklight edition of the journal with more information on this exact scenario. So idk to what extent this fic is/will be canon-compliant now... but we shall see. Either way, I think we need a fandom group hug because you just know it's going to hurt...

The weight and balance of the gun was familiar to him now; or at least as familiar as anything was these days. Sometimes, he found, even the sort of muscle memory that one doesn’t remember learning seemed faded, blurry about the edges. 

Still, right now Fiddleford McGucket wasn’t thinking about that. Instead, he was standing at the side of the desk over which his old friend lay slumped in sleep, head pillowed on his arms. Fiddleford’s hands were damp with cold sweat on the smooth metal, as he held the gun just above Ford’s head, trying to still the trembling in his fingers. 

He stood there silently, just holding the gun and looking down at the sleeping face of his old friend. Ford almost always fell asleep at his desk these days, and even now Fiddleford couldn’t help a small smile at the way Ford’s glasses were resting at a skewed angle, a familiar frown on his face, the one he also wore when he thought deeply about a problem. 

It wasn’t a peaceful sleep, granted, but it was _sleep_ , at the very least. 

But the smile soon faded from Fiddleford’s face, as images flashed before his eyes. They were slower in coming than they usually were - _and that was a mercy, the greatest he had been granted, forgetfulness_  - but sure enough, the memories soon came. 

For when Ford slept at his desk like this - especially lately - he didn’t always _sleep_. Sometimes, he would stir, and his eyes would flicker open, glowing incandescent yellow, pupils horribly slitted, _and the oh, smile that would curl across his lips, showing his teeth then_ … Fiddleford shuddered, causing the glass bulb of the gun to rattle a little. That wasn’t even the worst part though; the worst was the voice, the voice that was nothing like the familiar voice of the friend he had known all these years, a stranger’s voice coming from Ford’s mouth. 

_Was it even human, that voice?_

To that question, as to so many others, Fiddleford had simply no answer. 

It had started not long ago, as they had picked up the pace of working on the portal - driven by Ford’s great, all-consuming obsession, the passion and drive that had brought Fiddleford all the way from California in the first place, he had to remind himself. That was just how he _was_ ; Stanford Pines swept everything up along with him. At first, Fiddleford had taken Ford’s seemingly endless stream of remarkable ideas, his sleepless, relentless dedication, for that alone.

Now though… well, now he was not so sure. 

Even when Fiddleford had fallen asleep - the taste of cup after cup of strong coffee still acrid at the back of his throat - Ford would wake up, sometimes, in the early morning with a freshly-written stack of calculations and notes at his side. Brilliant insights, too, even by his usual standards. 

Certainly not the sort of thing that spoke of days and weeks of interrupted sleep, of a mind running on caffeine and ink and metal-grease.

 _No, not like that at all_. 

Fiddleford squinted at the papers that Ford had crumpled beneath his arms, half-pillowing his head. _Sometimes it was the handwriting, he had found, sometimes the codes changed a little_ … not that Ford ever gave him much of a chance to look at it. He craned over Ford in the dim light; opportunities like this were hard to come by, and sometimes he forgot things these days, anyway. 

A flicker of fear went through him. Now that he came to think of it, opportunities to look at Ford’s work before it was done were _very_ hard to come by; it should be harder than this. Fiddleford hadn’t had a chance of glimpse inside that journal beneath Ford’s loosely curled hand for… well, he could barely remember how long. 

_Just one look?_

_Or was it too dangerous?_

He took a step forward, face set in determination, even as he wondered what he thought he was doing. 

 _And would it be dangerous to wake him, if_ … he thought for a moment. _There was something, something wrong here, but he couldn’t quite remember it_ …

Still, he had the gun, if all else failed, he thought with a heavy feeling in the pit of his stomach. Just set it to erase the events of tonight, gather his courage and fire if Ford were to wake…

_It wasn’t like Fiddleford hadn’t had to do that to his old friend before._

_That had been_ necessary _, though…_

Still, the very thought made guilt twist through him like a tooth ache, even as it had the first time. No, he wouldn’t do it unless he had no other option. Erasing his own mind, well, that he could do. _But taking someone else’s memories away… that was something different, something bad_. 

A line to cross, a door that led one way to places he didn’t want to go. 

Still, he had to remind himself, he had done it before, he could do it again, cross the line if he had to. _If it came down to a matter of stopping…_

_Now, what was he trying to stop again?_

He blinked, his train of thought thrown off as his hands shook once more, the rattling of the glass too loud in his head, even drowning the beating of his own heart, which seemed suddenly deafening in his own ears. 

Ford stirred.

Fiddleford froze, his whole body going rigid with fear of he hardly knew what as he stared, transfixed. 

Ford moved his head - knocking his glasses further askew - and mumbled something in his sleep, his hand curling now into a fist, then loosening once more. 

 _Would he wake_? Fiddleford hardly dared to breath; _and wasn’t it absurd_ , he still thought in some corner of his mind, _to be so afraid of his old friend, the one he had shared all his hopes and dreams with for so long?_  

But no; no it was not so absurd, said another, larger part. For if Ford were to wake now… well, there was no telling whether his eyes would be plain, soft brown, or whether they would burn with that cruel golden light, a voice like feedback on a bad microphone jangling through his head and rattling his bones. 

No, he thought. This fear at least was a rational one. 

That was a slight comfort, even as he drew in a breath. Ford had turned his head further, allowing Fiddleford a glimpse of something dark staining the side of his face. It was too dim to see properly, but there was something staining his glasses, dark and dried and cracking. 

Fiddleford thought vaguely that perhaps even now he _should_ be surprised by the sight of the dried blood clotted over one of Ford’s eyes; yet, somehow, he wasn’t surprised at all. 

Time seemed to stretch out as Ford mumbled a little more in his sleep, hair falling over his face - it was too long, Fiddleford thought, and he had the sudden strange urge to tuck a coarse brown curl behind his friend’s ear. He didn’t act on it, even though Ford’s face was now hidden from him. He was still frozen, immobile as a hunted animal caught in the light of a lamp. 

But, he thought, the situation wasn’t quite equivalent. He still had the memory gun, he could still type in “ _portal”_ , or “ _Gravity Falls”_ , or even “ _1975 to 1982″_. It would be easy to wipe clean whatever he wanted - needed - to free Ford from.

He could even type in “ _Stanford Pines”_ , he thought, and then all his friend’s memories - of everything in his life, everything that made him who he was - would be gone, trapped in a roll of magnetic tape in a canister that could be so easily destroyed, wiped from existence. He could certainly make Ford forget everything; the power was in his hands.

And in that moment, that  _terrified_ him. 

He lowered the gun, with a sigh. No; not like this. He couldn’t do it to Ford, not unless there was no other choice. He wondered why he had even thought he could.

Besides, Fiddleford knew, none of those other things were the real problem here. There was something else at work here, something that went above and beyond either of them. He had long suspected it, his suspicion congealing to horrible certainty by the day. 

Lately, he had been almost entirely sure, and yet he still couldn’t quite put a finger on it. It frustrated him, it drove him to nervous distraction. 

And of course, whenever fear seized him, the grip of the memory gun always felt blissfully cool and solid in his grasp; a kindness, he would think as he turned in on himself. 

Fiddleford gritted his teeth and held the gun tighter as Ford muttered in his sleep once more, his fingers convulsing as he dreamed, crushing a loose sheet of paper beneath them and then releasing it again. 

Fiddleford almost let out his breath, lowering the gun slightly and craning over the papers once more, his curiosity rising once more… _just one look_ …

“Fiddleford?”

He almost dropped the gun in his haste to stuff it into the inner pocket of his labcoat, biting down painfully on his lip as he reeled back. 

“Ah!” He squinted suspiciously at his friend in the dim light of the pilot lights and switches and flickering gauges of the control panel behind them. “Awake, huh?”

Ford was scrubbing the heels of his hands over his face, blood flaking off on his palms. Fiddleford swallowed nervously, his hand inching towards the gun in his pocket. From where he was standing, he could still not quite see Ford’s eyes. 

“Yes” said Ford, rubbing his eyes once more, straightening his glasses and shaking his head. “Yes I am.” He got to his feet, slowly, began to turn… 

 _Golden or brown? Brown or golden, or golden or brown, or_ …

Fiddleford released his breath and smiled, as soft brown eyes met his, quickly turning to a frown of concern. 

“Fiddleford, what’s wrong?” Ford frowned. “I know I said before that there wasn’t time to sleep, but today of all days…” he seemed almost hurt, agitated. “Tonight of all nights…”

Fiddleford frowned too. “Uh… why… who said somethin’s wrong? What’s gotten into you all of a sudden?”

Ford blinked at him, his mouth breaking into a nervous smile which quickly disappeared, replaced by a quick-flashing succession of looks that Fiddleford could read. Had that been his imagination? A flicker of light caught in the reflection of Ford’s glasses, or had it been…

“Don’t you remember, Fiddleford?” Ford’s smile was tentative, worried, but excitement quickly grew on his face. “It’s the day _before_ test day!” 

“Right” said Fiddleford, the word heavy in his mouth, in his heart. “Sure. Now, how could I forget.” He made the greatest effort he could to smile, but was unsure of the result. “Still, you’re one to be hecklin’ me with talk about not sleeping in the run up to the big day. If I’m having a sleepless night, then what’re you doing, I’d like to know? It’s just gone five o’clock, and I’ll bet my calculator that you’ve only slept a quarter hour this whole night.”

Ford smiled wryly, stretching and running a hand through his hair, rubbing his unshaven chin and making a vague effort to straighten his rumpled clothes. His eyes really were brown, Fiddleford thought, safely, reassuringly so, and his voice… well, Fiddleford _thought_ that was normal. 

He was as certain of it as he was of anything these days. 

“You barely use your calculator and we both know it” said Ford, smiling. “So stop trying to make me bad bets.” His shoulders drooped a little. “But you’re right, of course. I probably _should_ sleep a little more before the morning comes.” He picked up his journal and his loose papers before Fiddleford could get a proper look at them, scooping them into the pocket of the labcoat he was still wearing. 

The silence stretched out between them, for a long, long moment. 

“Fiddleford?”

“…Yeah?”

“It’s just little tweaks and adjustments to go. Small stuff, easy stuff. So how about we get it done tomorrow… uh, today now, and in the evening…” Ford hesitated, clearly trying to breath evenly. “The night before test day… we take the night off, hmm? Make the time, go to the diner, toast our accomplishments rather than work all night?”

“Why?” _We’ve worked enough nights, after all_.

Ford half-smiled, punching his arm softly, awkwardly. “Because for one thing, I know you like that place. And because... remember old Professor Hodgkinson, who _always_ knew when you’d done something the night before? What would he say, hmm? I wouldn’t be surprised at all if he came back in the form of a ghost to haunt us for the rest of our lives if he knew we were working on a portal to another world the very night before testing! And I’ve seen my share of ghosts.” 

Fiddleford laughed weakly, despite himself. “ _Y_  ' _always_ did your assignments the night before though!”

“Well, so did you!” 

They both laughed a little more, before their smiles faded, and a thoughtful sort of silence descended once more. 

Besides…” he made that face that Fiddleford vaguely recognised from when they had sat exams together in college; part nervousness, part sleep deprivation, part absolutely iron-clad expectation that he was going to achieve something great. Ford was like that, Fiddleford had come to learn; he never, ever expected to fail, and this was no different.

“…Besides…?” prompted Fiddleford, feeling nervousness spike through him again as Ford’s sentence tailed off, a slight frown gathering on his face again. Fiddleford couldn’t see his eyes as the light glanced off his glasses once more, _and he had to see Ford’s eyes, there was a specific reason for that, he knew. As long as he could see Ford’s eyes he was safe._

 _Now if he could only remember why_ …

“Because soon enough things are going to change” said Ford, a bright smile suddenly lighting his whole face. “Trust me, in approximately…” he looked at his watch, peering at it in the dim light. “…thirty-one hours, _everything_ will change.”

“Yeah” said Fiddleford, forcing himself to stare back into those earnest eyes, refusing to let his gaze waver. “If that ain’t the truest truth I ever heard.”

“Good” said Ford, clapping his hands together briskly, and turned on his heel, waving back over his shoulder. “Sleep tight, and see you in the lab!” And with that he left Fiddleford alone. 

Inevitably, Fiddleford’s hand crept to the memory gun in his pocket after Ford had gone, drawing it out very slowly. Trying to breath evenly, he turned it towards his own head. _Just once more. Just now, to calm the nerves. Maybe it would help with the sleep, to get through tomorrow._

_And after that… well maybe once more, for whatever was to come._

_Maybe it would help him to forget his fear altogether._  

He bit down on his lip as he fired, the bright blue reflections crackling across banks of screens and dials like watching eyes all around. 


End file.
